[spectre] Cool Media Hot Talk Show on RADIO 2.0.

[Tania Goryucheva]

COOL MEDIA HOT TALK SHOW
D.I.Y. talk show on art & media
www.coolmediahottalk.net

features:

TOPIC:  Radio 2.0.  The Art of Radio in the Age of the Internet
SPEAKERS: Adam Hyde and Arie Altena
QUESTIONS: Ask-It-Yourself NOW and during the show at  
www.coolmediahottalk.net

Wednesday May 2, 20.30 CET
video stream and interface for online participation:  
www.coolmediahottalk.net
location: De Balie, Amsterdam www.debalie.nl (bring your laptops and  
mobiles)


ABOUT THE TOPIC:

Radio 2.0

Questioning the relevance of radio in the internet age

Internet radio or net.radio is now so much part of the daily practice  
and experience of the internet that it has become alsmost  
‘vernacular’, i.e it is almost impossible to perceive it for what it  
is (audio on-line), and more importantly to see it as something that  
could be imagined differently. The adoption of the metaphor in such  
mainstream software packages as iTunes strengthens the adherence to  
the old and accustomed model of ‘radio’ with a critical mass of  
internet users. In a sense, most befitting to a show about media hot  
and cool, it expresses beautifully the idea of McLuhan that “the  
content of any new medium is an old medium” and that we are thus  
“moving into the future looking backwards”…

We want to question what the relevance of radio is (as an artistic  
form and as a medium) in the internet age. Why stick to the notion of  
‘radio’ when the ways of handling and experiencing audio in an on- 
line environment (on the internet) can be so much more versatile? Is  
not a concept like net.radio, popular in internet-art circles such as  
the xChange network, already a reactionary move towards the past?

If artists want to explore, continue or reinvigorate the legacy of  
‘Radio Art’, why connect this with an internet related practice?  
Looking back at the history of radio as a medium and the artists  
involvement it is important to remember that already in the late  
1920s Bertold Brecht famously explored the idea of radio as a  
distributed interactive communication space consciously as an  
artistic and a social / political tool. Technically also traditional  
radio has the capacity of transforming every receiver into a  
transmitter, thus enabling a communication structure pretty similar  
to the internet. However, it was not technology but regulation and  
legislation that killed this transformative potential of the radio  
medium.

Looking at this today two ideas present themselves: First that we  
need to be aware of this history in order not to make the same  
mistakes vis-à-vis the internet (allowing it to be closed down by  
regulation and legislation). Secondly, now that a mass of users has  
become accustomed to the open media of the internet, would it not be  
a more productive and interesting idea to take the internet to radio,  
rather than the other way around? Why not try to open up the  
traditional radio space in a way similar to the internet, taking the  
internet-attitude of the youtube generation to radio?

This is also important locally in Amsterdam, where after all this  
show is physically staged, which had a huge tradition in open media  
and free radio, but where the radio space has recently been  
forcefully closed down by new regulation, legislation ánd enforcement!


ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Arie Altena (.nl), is a writer and theorist who lectures and writes  
about new media, art, internet-culture, media-theory &c. for various  
magazines and publications. Currently he also works as editor/ 
researcher for V2_ in Rotterdam. His weblog is at: http://ariealt.net/ 
blog/

Adam Hyde (.nz), is an artist, educator, tactical media practitioner,  
streaming media consultant, and sometime curator. He is involved in  
numerous projects that fuse (sound-) art, radio, and the internet,  
a.o. r a d i o q u a l i a, Radio Astronomy, and Polar Radio. http:// 
www.radioqualia.net/ http://www.xs4all.nl/~adam/


STATEMENT OF ADAM HYDE:

Radio is not as it seems. It has never been live. It has always been   
a rather fast method for delivering an archive. It is now time to  
confront the great pretender and investigate the nuances of the  
reigning principle of radio - delay.

Radio is the best archival media there is. Copy your digital files  
into sound, broadcast them into space, - they will exist forever.  
Retreiving them does require some work still as the speed of light  
remains a barrier for indexing and retrieving radio waves, but given  
time science cures even the most anxious archivists worries. Archive  
now, let science take care of the rest later.

But is radio really an archival medium? Or is it live? Are radio  
waves  themselves a guarantee of liveness or do they simply deliver  
archival material really quickly? What does 'live' actually mean and  
does it even  matter? Further, what role does the internet have in  
this debate, is it possible to say that a downloaded mp3 file is live  
radio?

Adam will talk about various projects he has worked on including r a  
d i o q u a l i a s Radio Astronomy (http://www.radio-astronomy.net)  
and Wifio ( by Simpel - http://www.simpel.cc). Radio Astronomy is a  
live online radio station broadcasting sounds from space. Wifio is a  
radio tuner that allows you to listen to the internet. It captures  
data traffic on open wireless connections and translates emails,  
webpages, voip and irc to speech. With wifio you too can listen to  
the internet in your neighbourhood....


STATEMENT OF ARIE ALTENA:

What is radio? Maybe the only way of explaining what radio nowadays  
signifies, is by taking radio as a sort of mock-latin for "I am  
beaming", or "I am sending". In the West we are getting quite far  
removed from 'radio' as a specific way of transmitting signals  
through the air, or a format where someone in a studio makes a  
programme for us to listen to. The word radio is grifted upon many of  
our media-uses. We can even conceptualize of every carrier of an iPod  
or laptop with an open internet-connection and iTunes (or another  
sound-programme running) as radio-stations, stations that others can  
tune into. Radio then is - like the commercial channels - an  
operation upon an archive (selected play lists from a huge database  
of sound files), possibly remixed.

I like this re-use of the word radio - taking all those stations  
streaming sound as radio. Most of that is utterly uninteresting to  
most (even when I sit down in places like De Balie or V2_ and proceed  
to check on the shared iTunes-'radio stations' in my immediate  
environment, I hardly ever see anything I'd like to listen to, and I  
imagine the same will be true of people checking on my archive.) If  
we have something like radio, it is radically personalized (more  
personalized than Last.fm).

This is the perspective of the listener who in some sense,  
involuntary, becomes a radio station himself, by carrying around  
networked equipment. It's a technology-effect, it has not much to do  
with a (conscious) decision to start sending.

What then does the same technological change signify for someone who  
takes the conscious decision to send? To become a disembodied voice?  
To represent - what?

I am always a bit disappointed when alternative radio - say artists  
taking up radio - uses the formats of classic, mainstream radio from  
the twentieth century, from the high times of  'radio stations', with  
talk shows, jingles, announcements, phone-ins, and a deejay who talks  
in between records that he spins. Of course, that was a strong genre.

A note: all the radio programmes that I have fond memories of were  
held together by a distinctive human voice (like that of Michiel de  
Ruyter).


SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS & COMMENTS!
VOTE FOR THE PROPOSALS OF OTHERS!
JOIN THE DISCUSSION!
here & now: www.coolmedaihottalk.net

SPECIAL: ASK THE BEST QUESTION & win the COOL MEDIA PRIZE!
the winner will be selected through direct and open voting

Tickets: 5 euro
Reservations by telephone: +31.20. 55 35 100  (during opening hours  
of the ticket office)
Or via the Balie website: www.debalie.nl/agenda

De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics,
Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10
Amsterdam
www.debalie.nl